Low-intensity light switching of cavity-atom polaritons

Abstract

I analyze an all-optical switching scheme in a cavity QED system consisting of multiple three-level atoms confined in a cavity mode. A control laser coupled to the atoms from free space induces quantum interference in the coupled cavity-atom system and performs all optical switching of the cavity-atom polaritons. When the cavity is tuned far away from the atomic resonance, the cavity-atom polariton consists of nearly pure photonic excitation and then the scheme can be used for photon switching at low light intensities.